"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and other personal passions with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone. Never had ads, never will.
There have been some concerns raised in the land trust community that one of the impacts of climate change will be the displacement of some native species by others that are expanding their ranges. A recent article by Attorney James L Olmsted entitled: "The Butterfly Effect: Conservation Easement, Climate Change and Invasive Species"suggests a number of changes that land Trusts can make to their easement language to anticipate this problem, but the underlying premise that in-migrating North American species "will in many cases be invasive" is on questionable scientific ground.
It is wrong to think
of species and natural communities as static and restricted to where they are
today, or were at the time of European contact.
The term “Invasive” is
both relative in space and time and too
broadly applied to North American species that are expanding their
natural ranges in response to environmental factors and opportunities. Birds have been doing this for a very long
time. The black vultures now present in
large numbers in Connecticut were not found north of Maryland in the first part
of the 19th century (all those dead horses at Gettysburg gave them a
beachhead). Cardinals were not part of
my mother’s Massachusetts girlhood. Coyotes
are filling an available large predator niche after the extirpation of wolf and
cougar populations.
The term “Invasive” has more validity when it is restricted to introduced species, and then only to those which have such characteristics as spreading across
spatial gaps, establishing virtual monocultures and multiple dispersal methods. Having these attributes, species
should be demonstrated to displace and
outcompete native species to be considered invasive. Under this
definition, House Sparrows are invasive, but Cattle Egrets which, bless their
hearts, got here by crossing the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean all on their
own, are not.
When I was part of the Massachusetts Invasive Plant Advisory Group that
developed criteria to determine which species should be considered invasive or
potentially invasive in the Commonwealth, we had a very hard debate about Black
Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia), a central Appalachian species which can be
problematic in pine barren systems in the Northeast. Had the glaciers receded a few thousand years
earlier, Robinia would likely have expanded its natural range a few hundred
miles further north, resulting in a different kind of natural community where
it overlapped with pitch pine and scrub oak.
Humans helped it make the jump, planting Black Locust for fence poles
(which sometimes resprouted!).
My advice for anyone drafting a conservation easement or management plan is to start by answering
the question; “What are we trying to conserve and managing for?”
The question of invasiveness relates directly to whether a species
impacts the viability of conservation targets. The best example I can remember from my TNC
days concerned a fen in NJ that was also a bog turtle site. The fen had a large and expanding incursion
of purple loosestrife (an exotic species non-native to North America). There were two possible conservation targets
to manage for at this site: the rare natural community represented by the fen,
and the federally threatened bog turtle species. The condition of the fen was severely
degraded and attempting to eradicate the loosestrife threatened worse
disturbance as well as the bog turtles that still were using it, so it was
determined not to try to manage the fen as fen, but as bog turtle habitat. The bog turtle basking areas were being shaded out by the loosestrife, so
the management prescription was to cut the loosestrife stalks by hand each year
before they set seed. This took several
days of cutting by hand, but was the best response available to conserve the primary
conservation target.
So, if we are managing for rare and restricted habitat types, some of
which will not be viable in their current configuration, or indeed in any form with
climate change, we are making a choice to prioritize them against the
prevailing forces of change. That may
indeed be the right thing to do, but even then the calcareous fens of Connecticut
will not have the same species composition and structure as those in Maryland
even when our climate changes to that of Maryland today.
There are special gaps that are unlikely to be crossed by native fen
species present today in Maryland but not in Connecticut. That is the beauty of natural variation. Diversity matters, but it plays out in many
different ways from site to site.
Especially with large, “functional” landscapes, the idea is not to
manage them to maintain exactly the species types and forest composition of
today, but so that they are robust and resilient enough to maintain
biodiversity, in whatever forms may be viable in the future. Invasive plants may well be a factor that
needs to be accounted for, but it does not begin or end with a list of species
that are “meant to be here” and others that are not.
The venerable History Carnival celebrates its 100th edition this month. It all began as a fortnightly affair back in January, 2005, and carried on that way through the first 50 editions. It then shifted to a monthly schedule in April, 2007 and so it continues to this day.
This state of affairs makes it challenging to apply an appropriate commemorative modifier to History Carnival 100. I suppose one might call it something along the lines of the "Demicentimensiversary Edition", but I'm no fan of the tendency in certain academic circles to invent needless, inelegant jargon instead of communicating in clear and lucid prose. All this manages to accomplish is to problematize structural totalities under the rubric of hegemonic hermeneutics, n'est-ce pas? Damn skippy. History Carnival 100 it is.
Here at Walking the Berkshires, we serve up history the way we like our single malt: neat, with plenty of smoke and peat and a dry lingering tail. Some light agitation helps to bring out all the subtle notes and complexity: less a kick in the jaw than warm oil on the tongue...
Excuse me a moment...Mmmm....Ahhh. Caol Ila, 12 Years Old. Right, well, why not help yourself to the beverage of your choice, and we'll get on with the show!
Alternate History: The Good, the Bad, and the Downright Ignorant
I am extremely fond of counterfactual history when it is done well. So much of the actual history has to be right in order for the fabrication to hold together. There is also the possibility that 2nd order counterfactuals stemming from the first might well bring about the same historical outcome from a different direction. Sometimes, no matter where they begin, all roads must inexorably lead to Rome.
One of the first rules of counterfactual hypothesizing is to make as few changes as possible to the conditions leading up to the alternate reality. We are talking about the lack of horseshoe nails, here, not the gun that won't exist until 2419 - cool as that is - as described by the National Museum of American History Blog.
Speaking of events that may yet come to pass, the question of whether there should be a new monument to Virginia State troops at Antietam is the subject of a fascinating post at Kevin Levin's Civil War Memory. Brian Schoeneman, a candidate for elected office in the Virginia House of Delegates, gamely weighs in at several points during an extensive comment thread - every bit as interesting as the post itself - in support of his campaign pledge to make this happen.
An excellent example of alternate history done right is featured this month at Today in Alternate History, which speculates on what might have been, if only Austria's Archduke Franz Ferdinand had avoided assassination in 1914. Would you believe resurgent Hapsburgs, giving rise by 1930 to a "Triple Monarchy of Austria-Hungary-Slavonia, Turkey, and a docile but resource-rich Romanov Russia under the frail hemophiliac Tsar Alexander IV"?
Certainly that is more believable than some of the self-deceptive mangling of American history perpetrated recently by some of the most prominent faces of the Tea Party movement. I felt compelled to offer these candidates for the highest office in the land a helpful multiple choice quiz on our Revolutionary history, but J. L. Bell of Boston 1775 corrects the record on Sarah Palin's mistatements about the Midnight Rider with far more class and less snark than I could muster. Quoth he;
"So did Palin share a correct and uncommonly knowledgeable interpretation of Revere’s ride? Or was she correct only in the way that a stopped clock is correct if you look at it in exactly the right way and ignore it a second later? That argument might have raged forever, but then someone came along and made it impossible to maintain that Palin enjoys a detailed, accurate understanding of the start of the Revolutionary War. That person was Sarah Palin."
"...in his Houston speech to the Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan fell for one of the great hoaxes of American history, surpassed in taking people in only by H.L. Mencken`s enchanting fable about Millard Fillmore’s installing the first bathtub in the White House,” Schlesinger wrote. “The author of the less than immortal words Lincoln never said was an ex-clergyman from Erie, Pa., named William J.H. Boetcker.”
Airminded examines British media claims during WWII that RAF precision bombing in reprisal for the Blitz was morally and technically superior to indiscriminate Luftwaffe bombing, and finds them wanting:
"Nearly everything in these articles is, at best, wishful thinking. Bomber Command's aircrew may as well have shed their bombs as aimed them, for all the difference it made: as the Butt Report revealed the following year, only one in four aircraft dropping bombs over Germany did so within five miles of their target point. The intention was 'accurate bombing', but the effect was indiscriminate (when the bombs didn't fall on open countryside, that is, which most of them did)...as things were, it's just not possible that what the RAF was doing to Germany in late 1940 was more effective (in any sense) than what the Luftwaffe was doing to Britain."
Still, for my money, if your history is going to be bad, it might as well be entertaining.
"This is a history that gets overlooked or ignored because of recent debates in the West over garments-as-oppression for other women–you know, Afghani women in burkhas, or other Muslim women covered by the hijab or la voile. As though Western women’s clothing has never been an issue in their citizenship or their feminism!"
And then we have certain minted pneumismatic artifacts of scholarly interest blogged about at Hypervocal. Be forewarned that these may be considered NSFW in some quarters. Are they ancient Roman brothel tokens, or possibly pornographic gaming pieces? At right, a proposed design for a modern token, suitable for use by disgraced US Congressmen in exchange for sexting services, appropriately priced at "sex asses", if I remember my High School Latin.
(I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that certain internet search terms taken out of context from the preceding paragraph are going to single handedly make History Carnival 100 the most heavily visited edition of all time. Just imagine if I had included extended pasages from The Satyricon...)
Blinding Me With Science
It seems appropriate at this point to bring up the subject of censorship. Take, for example, the history of the active suppression of various lines of scientific inquiry. There have been a number of mutually sustaining blog discussions this month on this topic, including one at Christopher M Luna that opines;
"the tendency to label pre-nineteenth century thinkers as scientists created the “possibility of a false impression that science is somehow eternal, separate from the people who practiced it, just waiting to be revealed” and that such an impression could lead to “a problematic faith in progress, a misunderstanding of the scientific method (as though it is static or eternal), and, perhaps most popular these days, a mischaracterization of the interaction between people investigating the natural world and religion."
"The heliocentric hypothesis says that heliocentricity offers a possible model to explain the observed motion of the planets; it says nothing about the truth-value of this model. The heliocentric theory says that the universe is in reality heliocentric. In 1616 the Church banned the heliocentric theory but not the hypothesis. This might at first seem like splitting hairs but in reality it is a very important distinction."
In a similar vein, Jeannie at Tripbaseblog offers her picks for the 8 Most Inspiring American Speeches of All Time and presents their settings as potential history tourism destinations. I confess I would not have thought to include Swami Vivekananda in this lineup, but I wouldn't mind a visit to Chicago (when the Cubbies are in town).
Thomas Dixon's The History of Emotion's blog delves into emotional animals in history and offers up a 1705 account of a weeping horse in Augsberg. I'll see your horse and raise you a Beagle - Schultz's, not Darwin's.
Reading and Misreading
Sandusky Library/Follett House Museum posts at Sandusky History about The Prisoner's Farewell by Irl Hicks, a confederate POW, who upon release at war's end was selected to give a Valedictory Address to the Young Men's Christian Association of Johnson's Island Ohio.
Anchora discusses the relationship between the use of inverted commas in early modern texts as commonplace markers and Kindle's "popular highlights" feature. Here's mine from hers;
"Once you become aware of the significance of inverted commas in early modern books, though, you will never read them the same way again -- it opens up an entirely new (if, perhaps, still familiar to us) way of reading in which texts are mined for pithy, quotable passages."
Mark Liberman at Language Log takes his shots at the media bias toward "sensationalism, conflict and laziness" and offers up this post entitled "A Reading Comprehension Test". Are you smarter than the designers of this American History test for 12th graders, the educational expert who assessed its results, and the news outlets that covered those findings?
"My recent engagement with the wonderful world of blogs and Twitter has certainly shown me both more interest in and more misused history of science than I had previously come across. (I do not feel, in some cases, that misuse is too strong a word. What the Tea Party do to 18th-century American history, supporters of ID do to Darwin and both sides in the arguments about what Christianity has and has not done for science tend to do to the whole history of Western science.) "
Once again, the comment thread is as thought provoking as the post itself.
Frank Jacobs is Mapping Bloomsday in his Strange Maps blog at Big Think.
"This map is not much help in reconstructing that walk, but it does capture the elementary narrative structure of Ulysses. And it does so in that perennial favourite of schematic itineraries, Harry Beck’s London Underground map."
Ralph Luker kindly passed along this highly visual post by Lili Loufborrow writing at the Hairpin concerning women with books they're not reading in art. Mind you, El Greco's Penitent Magdalen has one heck of a Golgotha paperweight blocking her view. I suspect that Christiane Inman's 2009 Forbidden Fruit: A History of Women and Books in Art , described as "a history of women's literacy, and the social forces that often opposed it", may offer a helpful corollary for those with interest in pursuing this topic further.
The History of England gets a fix on the Anglo Saxon World View. I was particularly struck by the following citation attributed to Louise C., participating in a discussion at Historum Forum;
'A mappa mundi is a depiction of the world as a place of experiences, of human history, of notions and knowledge. It's more like an encyclopedia. It's certainly not - and was never intended to be - a chart to be followed by travellers"
History and the Sock Merchant explores Dejima: the 'Deep Space Nine' of Feudal Japan that was "the single place of direct trade and exchange between Japan and the outside world during the Edo period (1603 - 1868)."
"The volunteers I was working with started turning up some startling items amid the field reports and correspondence—pulp magazines from the 1930s, newspaper clippings with headlines straight out of the era of yellow journalism, and gruesome photos of dead bodies...And what a story it turns out to be! It has everything you’d expect (and wouldn’t expect!) from a Smithsonian expedition to tropical seas—exotic islands, fascinating wild fauna, stout-hearted scientists, a love triangle, and, very likely, murder.."
Looks like excellent beach reading. In other mysterious museum news, Galt Museum & Archives blog has one concerning Miss Edith Kirk, an artist "who came from an influential family in Yorkshire, travelled to remote towns in western Canada and then settled in Lethbridge. We don’t know why she left England, nor how she would find herself in the far northern reaches of British Columbia. Trying to fill in the many gaps of her life is an interesting challenge."
ThinkShop explores Joris Ivens and the Legend of Indonesia Calling, a film about the struggle for Indonesian self determination after WII that few saw at the time but which had an impact that was felt by many.
"By the mid-1960s Indonesia Calling had become a film that had a growing following in Holland, long before it had an audience. This made it unique in the history of the cinema. In its symbolic form it intervened in the historical process, shaping memory and providing a site for the articulation of diametrically opposing approaches to the national, and indeed international, past. The facticity of the film become tangential to it most significant impact. The film as fact had been replaced by the film as signifier."
HSP's Hidden Histories takes us out on an uplifting note with selections from a useful but often underutilized historical resource: the 1850-1880 US Mortality Schedules. Alas for the likes of poor William Shuler, age 54 , who died in June of 1869 in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Norriton Township, "while disinterring a dead body in {a} Cemetery, having a cut on his finger, had his blood poisoned, from which he died."
This concludes History Carnival 100, brought to you this month by the Roman numeral C, and respectfully submitted by your most humble and obedient servant, a sometimes Continental in the recreated 1st New Jersey Regiment who on occasion even manages to go Walking the Berkshires. The History Carnival returns in August and you could be the host! Trust me, Sharon makes it easy and it's much more fun than your viva or junior prom ever were.
The rest of you may submit nominations here or follow along on Twitter (@historycarnival). Now if you'll excuse me, I need to see a man about a ray gun. I'm leaving the Brown Bess at home for my next reenactment. Consider this my warning to the British, à la Palin's Revere; "You are not going to take our atomic pistols!"
I am a good negotiator. I understand the relationship between the value we place and the values we hold. I know that intangibles matter, and that there are no bank vaults in heaven. I know that it is rarely if ever the case in my personal or professional negotiations that it comes down to destroying the village in order to save it. I can walk away without burning all my bridges.
My father has a remarkable ability to turn vocal adversaries into staunch allies. Once, when he was a young headmaster at a struggling boarding school where our family roots go deep, he promoted one of his harshest critics to a position of leadership that grew to a close partnership. He saw something in this individual that was keeping him from reaching his potential and turned a potential threat into an opportunity. It does not always work out this way, but when it does the results can be astounding. Abraham Lincoln did something similar with his cabinet, and in many cases won the admiration and effective partnership of his former opponents.
I am not, by inclination, a cutthroat player of zero sum games. I do not consider negotiation a game at all. It is often possible to get an excellent deal that benefits more than one party. It is sometimes possible to get an acceptable deal that improves with age if tended with care.
Especially in land protection transactions, the best outcomes take both patience and clarity of communication to achieve. At the end of the day, the conservation organization has more leverage than it might appear to a small nonprofit staffed by volunteers as it negotiates with high net worth individuals who are used to corporate business transactions. Saving land, especially family land, is a different animal than mergers and acquisitions, and takes a different sensitivity to qualitative values than simply determining the appraised value of real estate.
Negotiations in my personal relationships are most satisfying when I end up feeling good about my motivation for generosity. There was a time in my life when I found it very hard to say no. Now I am more concerned with when and how to say it. If I have an Achilles Heel, it is that I would prefer to be liked than to get what I want by being difficult. I am quick to accept responsibility for my own mistakes, and am getting better at discerning which are mine to own and which belong to another. I have a temper, and work hard to suppress it. I have learned how to give criticism and express displeasure effectively in some conflict situations and am still learning in others. I do not chew out ineffective or unhelpful people, but neither do I choose to continue to do business with them.
Wendell Berry in The Mad Farmer's Manifesto challenges us to "Love someone who does not deserve it." I would recast this injunction as embracing opportunities to be generous when there is no obligation or expectation that we would do so. Goodwill often stills the troubled water. My grandmother used to speak about unkind silences, those missed opportunities to praise and acknowledge, and I find that with anything less than mortal adversaries, this can lead to better relations.
I say all this as someone who is preparing to walk into court tomorrow morning and finalize a divorce from my partner of nearly 20 years (15 of them as husband and wife). I see this not as a failure but as an investment in the future of our family. There is hurt and resentment, certainly, and doubt and pain, but there is also quietness and clear-eyed confidence. Some doors are closed, new windows are opened, and the bridges that remain are maintained by us both and are crossed by the children we cherish. It is an acceptable outcome, the best of all workable options, and has the potential to improve with age.
Commentator Bryan Fischer's persistent, incendiary remarks about the feminization of the Congressional Medal of Honor are his own deliberate fabrication and not some media distortion. The backlash they have provoked is likewise his own fault. He said them without apology and for effect, and is still saying them, even as he tries to frame his message around the point that we need to honor more "take the hill" acts of bravery as well as those who place the lives of their comrades above their own.
This is disingenuous, to say the least. In his repetition of "feminization" in the title of his published remarks (now stretched out in a three part series), Fischer unashamedly values "masculine" attributes - those who "kill people and break things" - at the expense of "feminine" qualities of courage. Extraordinary heroism and uncommon valor does not make this distinction.
He says we have become squeamish about presenting the Medal of Honor to those who kill the enemy, noting there have been no "take the hill" MOH citations in either Iraq or Afghanistan (he could also have added Somalia, for the two special forces members killed in the Black Hawk Down rescue and extraction in 1993).
There have been four Medal of Honor citations for soldiers serving in Iraq and four in Afghanistan, all of them but the latest for Staff Sergeant Giunta presented posthumously. We are certainly not squeamish about recognizing those who make the supreme sacrifice defending their comrades.
This is a very small sample size from which to draw the sort of conclusion that Fischer has made regarding one kind of valor being preferentially recognized over another in contemporary Medal of Honor citations. He makes very selective and slanted use of history. From the very beginning, there have been many Medal of Honor recipients who have been recognized for saving lives, to name just a few:
[Civil War] "During the attack on Charleston, while serving on board the U.S.S. Keokuk, Q.M. Anderson was stationed at the wheel when shot penetrated the house and, with the scattering of the iron, used his own body as a shield for his commanding officer."
[Civil War] Seaman Avery and Quarter Gunner Baker "braved the enemy fire which was said by the admiral to be "one of the most galling" he had ever seen, and aided in rescuing from death 10 of the crew of the Tecumseh, eliciting the admiration of both friend and foe."
[Indian Wars] "At McClellans Creek, Tex., 8 November 1874, Captain Baldwin received his second Medal of Honor citation after he "rescued, with 2 companies, 2 white girls by a voluntary attack upon Indians whose superior numbers and strong position would have warranted delay for reinforcements, but which delay would have permitted the Indians to escape and kill their captives."
[Spanish American War] At Tayabacoa, Cuba, 30 June 1898. Private Bell, 10th U.S. Cavalry, "voluntarily went ashore in the face of the enemy and aided in the rescue of his wounded comrades; this after several previous attempts at rescue had been frustrated."
[WWI] "During an operation against enemy machinegun nests west of Varennes, Cpl. Call was in a tank with an officer when half of the turret was knocked off by a direct artillery hit. Choked by gas from the high-explosive shell, he left the tank and took cover in a shellhole 30 yards away. Seeing that the officer did not follow, and thinking that he might be alive, Cpl. Call returned to the tank under intense machinegun and shell fire and carried the officer over a mile under machinegun and sniper fire to safety."
[WWII] "For conspicuous devotion to duty, extraordinary courage, and complete disregard of his own life, above and beyond the call of duty, during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor, by Japanese forces on 7 December 1941. As Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. West Virginia, after being mortally wounded, Capt. Bennion evidenced apparent concern only in fighting and saving his ship, and strongly protested against being carried from the bridge."
[WWII] "During the early part of his imprisonment at Makassar in April 1942, [Navy Lieutenant] Antrim saw a Japanese guard brutally beating a fellow prisoner of war and successfully intervened, at great risk to his own life. For his conspicuous act of valor, Antrim later received the Medal of Honor."
There are many more citations like these for recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Despite all protestations to the contrary, Fischer's irresponsible use of the term "feminization" is not just insulting to men and women; it dishonors the heroism of these servicemen.
At the heart of Fischer's words, of course, are the culture wars, and a fundamentalist nostalgia for an American values system that predates the 1960s. America today in fact does value minimizing casualties in modern wars. Iraq and Afghanistan are very different conflicts than the battlefields of Europe or the atolls of the South Pacific, where territory was conquered at a tremendous cost, as Fischer bluntly puts it, in people killed and things broken.
There were 16 million American men and women in uniform during World War II. 464 Medals of Honor were presented for actions taken during that war, 266 of them posthumously, and most, it is fair to say, for fearlessness and ferocity in combat, often when on the defensive. All were for selfless acts, and it is this quality, above all others exhibited by Medal of Honor recipients past and present, that is in keeping with the highest traditions of the service. Fischer's actions, however, belong in the ash heap of history.
Like many observers interested in the Tea Party — though unlike many Harvard historians — Lepore sat in on meetings; attended rallies, including Sarah Palin’s visit to Boston; observed how local elementary teachers taught the Revolution; and explored the historical tourism industry, especially the Boston Tea Party Ship, a replica currently sitting in Gloucester and in serious disrepair. What the Tea Party was marshaling, she found, wasn’t patriotic spirit, and it certainly wasn’t history. It was, in her term, “antihistory.”
Two things separate antihistory from its prefix-less sibling. First, and most obvious, antihistory gets stuff wrong...The second — and, for Lepore, more serious — problem with antihistory is that it hijacks history’s raw materials. It takes a messy tumble of personalities and events and quotations and molds them into a static picture, a picture that happens to line up with current policy goals...
...These twinned ideas, Lepore writes, add up to a form of “historical fundamentalism, which is to history what astrology is to astronomy, what alchemy is to chemistry.” And that’s what makes antihistory more troubling than a simple partisan interpretation of history, which is something we’ve been indulging in for a long time.
The Boston Globe article cited above also includes a rebuttal of Lepore's charge of antihistory by some of those Tea party supporters she interviewed for her book, including President Christian Varley of the Greater Boston Tea Party:
They aren’t claiming to be historians and say they shouldn’t be held to that standard: Their focus is on political change. When they deploy the Founding Fathers, Varley says, they do so because “it’s a tool we can use — personalizing the ideas about the way government should be. I admit it’s a little contrived, but it’s no different than campaigning for a candidate or marketing a movie star.”
I care deeply about history, and in particular that period in America's past that has been appropriated by the Tea Party for its particular use. Nonetheless I do believe in my populist heart that history should not be the sole province of historians, any more than poetry or art or science are only intended for academics and specialists with the training to divine meaning and wield whatever power comes with such knowledge. I am with e.e. cummings to the extent that
since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you; wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world
To every thing there is a season, and the political season is not one that lends itself to good history. With the Tea Party phenomenon, however, we are not just speaking only of over the top campaign materials and statements by candidates who display a disturbing lack of historical understanding. We are talking about strongly held conservative beliefs about change, and power, and the role of government reenforced by clever manipulation of powerful symbols and the imagined past.
Such views are not sympathetic to academic discourse. Decontructing the flimsy historical underpinings of Tea Party propaganda may be good fun for the historian - heaven knows it comes easily enough for me - but it is not where the real argument is taking place. It is the wrong tool for the job. The quill gets obliterated by tar and feathers.
When fringe candidates like Carl Paladino or Christine O'donnell (or Sarah Palin) ride a backlash to primary victories, they tend to wither in the harsh light of scrutiny when their fitness to lead comes into question. Even so, there are plenty of Tea party candidates on ballots across the country today with better qualifications than these, if not a better grasp of history. Conventional wisdom has many of these winning election to statewide and national office this year.
The real impact on today's elections comes not from soldiers in the Tea Party movement but the massive financial resources from outside groups unleased by the Citizen's United ruling which in this political season has disproportionately favored Republican candidates. It is that version of history which bombards the electorate. And it is coming from very well established - if undisclosed - sources.
This, too, is nothing new. The colonial press was filled with anonymous screeds. General Washington was vilified in an anonymous letter written by his enemies in Congress on the eve of Valley Forge. In fact, the Washington parallel is striking, when one considers that the Tea Party is at its heart a reaction to Obama and what he represents, much akin to the criticism of Washington's personality cult during the dark hours of the Revolution.
The American Revolution was a war of words as well as blood. The sound bytes of Samuel Adams and his influence over the waterfront mobs were incendiary in revolutionary Boston. Yet he remained a destructive rather than constructive politician, better at riling a hornet's nest than at beekeeping (or brewing, for that matter).
Congresman Sam Rayburn famously observed after a Democratic defeat in 1953; "[Republicans] are going to learn the difference between construction and obstruction... Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it took a carpenter to build it." Good carpenters, like good historians, are in short supply this year.
Walking the Berkshires has reached its 5th Blogiversary today. Traditionalist readers are welcome to send gifts of wood (I accept nickels and nutmegs only, please). There have been 1233 posts and 2246 comments since I began blogging here, although now that I link back to Facebook many additional comments happen there. I am pleased by this ratio, since I write as much to connect as to inform (or entertain).
Particularly with regard to connections, I have made some very special friendships along the way. One longtime reader gifted me with his homemade Single Malt Marmalade, and another welcomed me to his home and showed me where my ancestors are buried. Yet another has shared an extensive interest in Revolutionary war history and reintroduced me to the world of historical reenacting. And I have met someone very special who was a longtime admirer from afar and who has opened my eyes to the possibility for new found joy. All this and more, from these eclectic and erratic musings. I am very grateful.
In retrospect, I really had no idea what WTB would come to mean to me, nor the form and content it would assume over time. With interests as broad as mine, readers are as likely to encounter a series on a little known episode in American history as they are an irreverent look at Presidential fashion (the one post that launched an Instalanche) or the occasional revelation of personal transition. It is a lot to ask, and I am touched that so many of you check in from time to time for whatever the catch of the day (or every third day or so) may be.
I do have some personal favorite posts. If I were to update this 2008 vintage greatest hits list, it might well include the following:
There are some additional posts of mine that attract daily visits from people searching for information on obscure historical incidents for which WTB has become something of an authority by virtue of what I have aggregated and analyzed. Searching for "Morro Castle Disaster" leads to this post, while I get considerable traffic drawn to a post regarding this image of Canadians at Vimy Ridge. Without question, the casual visitors are largely looking for images, but some of them stay for content. Even when I have added nothing for days, there are 200+ unique viewers and 400+ page views here.
That last observation has lead me to think long and hard about the future of WTB. There was a time when I felt driven to write something new every day - a time, it is fair to point out, when blogging was an escape as much as a passion. I have other interests, now, and outlets for my writing. It has been good while since I had the time and interest to delve into another long and engaging historical series, much as I still have that interest. Much of my nature writing ends up in the local paper. WTB has eased into comfortable middle age, and is resting on its laurels. Perhaps it has lost its edge.
In any case, I have no plans to discontinue this blog, but I will be taking some time to consider its future. Whichever way that path leads, I will be glad of your company.
The husks of butterfly weed have split and spilled their soft insides. They cling to their pods in feathery clusters, newly fledged and waiting on the wind. They drift in the high grass, through asters and bee balm, a seed rain in a dry season.
And I am like those seeds in a dry pod, waiting for release, or rebirth.
There is an almost centrifugal pull on my spirit as the seasons shift, riding out at the end of my tether with the equinoctial sun. Everything is in motion - coming and becoming - like the children who pass my house on their way to school, or the butterflies that pause by the cardinal flowers in my backyard.
I may lie out in the hammock beneath the maple tree, but if I
look up into the canopy I will see the veins of the worn out leaves and
know that the sweet corn days of summer are drawing to a close. I become impatient, and ready to get on with it.
Autumn in New England is our great consolation for all that ice and mud and our foreshortened Spring. Those early leaves turning now are the first notes of the dance, the approach of distant thunder out of sight behind the mountains. I can feel the tension in my bones, sinews taught and expectant. I can feel the thrum of my quickened heartbeat, standing still.
I want to rise up on broad wings and wheel out over the valley with the kettling hawks. And I
want another week of garden basil before the first and final frost, and
the warm taste of the sun to linger in the last of my tomatoes. It is hard to let go, and harder still to resist what comes to us all, in time.
The problem with the Berkshires is they lack an ocean. We had one once, long ago. There was a shallow inland sea on the other side of the mountains, which we can thank for our marble valleys today. Before that, before the ancestors of the Berkshires pressed upward to Himalayan stature as bits of what might otherwise have become part of Africa twisted and folded and transformed the very bones of the Earth in a relentless upwelling, the place where I sit today was once the edge of a Continent. Sometimes I feel the lack of that long receded sea, and the press of tides from 500 million years ago.
Although a fire sign, I am drawn to water. Not just to the shore, but beneath the waves in the womb of the sea. I am a child of salt water even more than fresh, more Triton than Naiad. I am happiest with waves in hearing, with the taste of brine on my skin.
I love the undulating spine of our mountains, but they do not curl in on themselves like Atlantic rollers as they shoal. I love the way that the wind ripples the grass in an unmowed field, but there are no whitecaps at the crest except for the darting swallows. When the air here is thick and waits for summer rain, the wind is always fresh off the bay.
Still, the fireflies in the meadow are are just as magical to me as glowing phosphorescence on dark nights by the shore. The song of the ovenbird plays at the strings of my heart like the mewing of gulls. The red efts in our moist woods and the savory wild mushrooms are the treasures we find here, instead of combing the beach and digging for clams.
In life, longing and loving, here and not here, are braided like strands of rope and are stronger together. There is time for each in its season, and to hold the absent places of the heart in our mind's eye. I feel the wind from the sea when I walk in these inland woods. I smell the sweet earth of home when my feet press the wet sand. They are all part of the fabric, a unified whole, and so my restless heart finds comfort.
